Measures for Progress: A History of the National Bureau of Standards

44 AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY
The proposed bill made the services of the Bureau freely available
to the Federal Government and to State and municipal governments, and,
for a fee, to any scientific society, educational institution, firm, corporation,
or individual within the United States engaged in manufacturng or other
pursuits requiring the use of standards or standard-measuring instruments.
All Bureau personnel, scientific, technical, clerical, and custodial,
were to be under Civil Service appointment, and to insure that the Bureau
served the best interests of science and commerce, a visiting committee of
five members appointed by the Secretary of the Treasury from among the
leading scientists and industrialists in the Nation was to visit the Bureau at
least once a year and report to the Secretary upon the efficiency of its work
and the condition of its facilities and equipment.
The staff of the new agency recommended in Gage's proposed bill
consisted of a director at $6,000 per year, a physicist at $3,500, a chemist
at $3,500, two assistant physicists or chemists at $2,200 each, two laboratory
assistants at $1,400 each, two others at $1,200, a secretary at $2,000, two
clerks at $1,200 and $1,000 respectively, a messenger at $720, an engineer
at $1,500, a fireman at $720, three mechanicians at $1,400, $1,000, and
$840 respectively, a watchman at $720, and two laborers at $600 each,
making a total of 21.
The bill asked for appropriations of $34,900 for staff salaries,
$10,000 for general expenses, $25,000 for the purchase of a laboratory
site, $250,000 for a suitable laboratory, and $25,000 to equip the laboratory.
These sums, Gage pointed out, were in no way excessive by comparison with
those allowed the national laboratories abroad. The Normal Eichungskom-
mission, established in 1868 in Berlin to regulate and inspect weights and
measures, had been granted an appropriation equivalent to $250,000 in 1899
for new buildings and equipment, and, its annual appropriation was $36,000.
The Reichsanstalt at Charlottenburg had cost $1 million and had an annual
appropriation of $80,000. Together the German bureaus were spending
$116,000 a year.
In England the testing bureau at the Kew Observatory (1871), the
Standards Department (1879), the Electrical Standardizing Laboratory
(1890), and the new National Physical Laboratory (1899) had total appro-
priations equivalent to $62,100. Austria's Normal Eichungskommission,
established in 1871 in Vienna, currently spent $46,000 a year, and the
Russian Central Chamber of Weights and Measures, established in 1878
at St. Petersburg, with laboratories costing $175,000 and added structures
built in 1895, spent $17,500 annually. By contrast, the appropriation for
the U.S. Office of Weights and Measures for 1897—98 'had been $10,000.69
Ibid., pp. 9—11.